Apple quits green standard, federal agencies won't buy its products

After five years of complying with one of the leading green standards in the tech industry, Apple has now decided to no longer register its products to match the environmental standard and this automatically means federal agencies won’t be able to get Apple products.

Apple is quitting the Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT), just weeks after the announcement of the MacBook Pro with Retina display and the third-gen iPad, both of which are extremely hard to disassemble as Apple has chosen to go for thinness over repairability and fuses the two with industrial-strength adhesive. That makes it extremely hard to replace parts like the battery.

The EPEAT standard on the contrary advocates long product lifetimes, and high standards for toxic material and recyclability of both components and packaging. By gluing the battery, Apple makes it extremely hard to repair its latest products, which means that it basically treats them as disposable electronics with lifetimes largely limited by the lifetime of their battery.

This obviously comes from Apple striving to bring thinner and better-looking devices, that customers have voted for over and over again in the last couple of years. The federal agencies that are now cut from Apple products however also have significant buying power, so it’s interesting to see how will this affect the company in Cupertino in the long term. What do you think, is that extra fraction of an inch worth a device you’d need to throw a fortune on to repair afterwards?

I'm not so sure going green has to sacrifice the two wishes mentioned that this article claims. More directly, If Apple is as innovative as everyone proclaims, shouldn't it be able to innovate around this road block?

Can't wait until the Sheep try to defend this move. Would love to see if they have the nerve to say going GREEN is pointless and a waste of time. Who cares about our future and protecting our planet as long as we get a cool looking apple product!!!!!

well let me be the first - who gives a flying f*ck? nobody cares about going green in the bigger scheme of things & neither do you. its just your way of instigating a worthless "i despise Apple" argument. if Google made this very same decision lets not pretend like you wouldn't still support Android anymore b/c they chose not to go "green". people have bills to pay & food to put on the table...who cares about going green. don't point fingers when you know damn well if the roles were reversed you would act in the same manner. fandroid is unfortunately becoming synonymous w/hypocrite.

What does that have to do with it? apple is a very arrogant company they basically told eveyone Fu*ck going green we want money so when your sh#t breaks that you paid thousands of dollars for breaks just go by another one it's okay. And you know what's sad is that most sheep will follow .most ppl in this day and age can't go and spend 1500 on a mac pro. It seems to me your just trying to stick up for a company who just doesn't give a Fu#k Thats the reason why most ppl hate apple because of the way the run there business

If you're a tech lover, the last thing you should be getting is an Apple product lol. You wanna play around with it? Go to the Apple store, I'm sure you can cover all it's functions in about half an hour.

this move has nothing to do with "thinner" and everything to do with widening the profit margin by forcing people to get new laptops sooner. The amount of space saved by gluing the battery to the device vs a tiny latch that secures it is mm's worth of space at best. This just artificially drives up repair costs and forces people to upgrade more often. Which is TYPICAL Apple behavior.

Now.. where's our local troll that likes to tout how he thinks government and big businesses like apple (which they do, but not nearly the numbers he likes to think). Since many companies and nearly all factions of government go by this exact green standard to buy things, Apple forced themselves out of that arena.

That's exactly what I was thinking, Apple has always been about selling, not repairing. I've seen employees at their "Genius" Bar tell customers to get the new version even when the customer was protected under Apple Care because they don't either want to repair the device or they can't because of the way they build their products

Screw the government. As a consumer I would wonder why it is that Apple is making it so much more difficult for consumers to have their products repaired or to replace a battery themselves?

I like having a PC because I can upgrade it myself. I like Android because I can root, customize or repair something brokwn myself. I like my iPad because of the games and it was free. I would never buy one even though I enjoy games on it.

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